


...and she slayed the great dragon

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Impending Execution, Kylux Cantina, M/M, delivery of last words, mention of war trial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 05:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12336603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Rey asks to see Hux, the night before he is going to be executed. Perhaps she means it to be kind, and Hux could sneer at that. But she would never be kind to him.





	...and she slayed the great dragon

**Author's Note:**

> For the Kylux Cantina prompt "Fairy Tale Ending."

There is something about the scavenger that reminds Hux of Maratelle. Maybe it is the way she clenches her teeth after she speaks, or how she stands, rigid with her fists clenched at her side, immobile and unmovable beyond the glass. But, no–she looks nothing like Brendol’s wife, with her dark hair and her wind-chafed skin and the furious, scalding scowl on her face. Maratelle’s wrath had always been a cold, unassuming thing until it got its claws in you. Not this mixture of anger and grief so plain on the girl’s face, this girl who had murdered and buried Kylo on some planet Hux will never know of, will never be able to go to to curl on the damp earth above his grave. 

Maybe it is just her words, the way he registers them as if through rain, muted and unreal. It leaves him feeling gutted, drowned, just as when Maratelle had slapped him and cursed him to be a little godless Imperial bastard–

Her face changes into something confused, brows scrunching up and lips pressing together in a questioning, unsure line.

“I heard you,” Hux says before she can do him to indignity of asking. His voice does not shake, though each syllable feels like a scrape against his dry, painful throat. She swallows visibly, and stares him down as if to demand some other response, like he is to be the wailing widow. 

Hux meets her gaze but she does not flinch back. He wonders how he looks, with his unkempt hair and his unshaven face, his sleepless eyes and his skin a patchwork of yellow-healing bruises. He wonders if she is looking past it all to try and brush against his muddled, jagged thoughts. 

Kylo had always been something like a swelling tide at the back of his mind, something impatient and hungry and carefully careless. She seems to be reaching out to him, like the first cold wind of a thunderstorm, but only reflexively, to gage his reaction. He can see by the clenching and unclenching of her hands that she wants simply to leave. 

“He asked me to tell you,” she says, and at this he smarts. His limbs go rigid and cold, and anger is a bitter, ugly thing between his ribs. 

“And you were so kind as to be his messenger,” Hux says, the words sour. “Tell me, what is it like to deliver the last words of the man you killed?” 

The scavenger’s face skews into something like disdain, but there is pity at the edges of it too, like she is thinking that this is his grief. It isn’t. Hux hates it, fiercely. 

“I didn’t need to do this,” she says, calming herself with a deep breath. “I could have just gone away, after we buried him, and left you to die without having his last words to you.” 

“You shouldn’t have come, then,“ Hux snaps, because he never once asked for them. He had never once asked where Kylo was, through all his days as the Resistance’s prisoner, through the farce of a war trial, and the days leading up to his execution. He had not once allowed himself to think that Kylo would save him, had abandoned him, had been killed shortly after his capture. He had never thought that Kylo would send someone to tell Hux that he had died. “Why did you?” 

She goes suddenly mute, pained, and Hux looks closer, sharper, reminds himself of the turn of grief in her voice when she had first spoken. Perhaps it had been nothing but guilt.

“So you did not get your fairy tale ending,” Hux sneers, and there is the tickle of laughter at the back of his throat, something mean and hysterical. “No glory for you in slaying the monster.” 

“He wanted to see you one last time,” she says, furious and ugly, throwing the words at his feet. “He was thinking of you, when I--,” she stops herself abruptly, and does not speak again. 

But Hux knows. He can hear her grinding her teeth, the displaced sense of justice unfelt. 

He wonders, for a brief, haphazard moment, what it must be like for two Force-users to fight each other in their own minds. He wonders if it is like two rivers crashing. He wonders if she had seen it all, or only a glimpse, had felt the push and collision of him and Kylo in each other’s gravities. If she had felt the ugly, tender joy of them. He wonders if she will be haunted by it, if this is but an exorcism of Kylo’s ghost from her thoughts. 

It leaves him feeling empty, bottomless, to think that this is their last true connection. 

She looks like she wants to say more, but nothing comes. He does not ask her anything. She leaves in silence, leaves him to the last night of his life with the knowledge of Kylo, bloody and dying, thinking of him. 

Hux watches her go in a flurry of robes the color of deep forests. The quiet presses down on him when her footsteps disappear, but it is not new. Grief is the only echo–hot and wet against his ribs, he takes a shuddering breath to even the pain of it. 

It will all end soon, anyways. 

There will be nothing left of them anymore, but the memory-of-a-memory. 

Hux closes his eyes, and waits for dawn and death and Kylo.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always interested in the ways other people perceive Kylo and Hux's relationship, so I tried to take a shot of it through Rey's view, as a person who only felt it through Kylo's feelings and thoughts. She never wanted to know, but now she has to be the one to live with the ghosts of the things they've done to each other. It's a terrible thing.


End file.
